I had to have some paper notarized the other day & Edd commented on the beautiful Signature of the notary. The guy has had this store around the corner for the last 50 years.
"Happiest day of my life is when they banned corproal punishment in NY Schools" We smiled he didn't.
Some of the priests in High School were truly sadistic 1 had a paddle named Billy Boy another Marist Brother had a little whip that he liked to use. Kneeling in front of the class for an entire class with a book balanced on your head or something equally obnoxious.

This actually happened to my 6 year old son. His "crime" ? Talking during quiet time in the cafeteria. Oh he did not tell me, but all the kids made a beeline to my door after school to let me know what happened.

I had signed a form (our schools had those) that stated my children were NOT to receive corporal punishment.

The next day when I showed up at the school office to see the principal (male) the secretaries were ready to make the popcorn.

Bottom line is, after trying to reason with this neanderthal, I picked up this paddle (drilled with holes) and told him to BEND OVER !!

Oh, I remember the holes in the paddle so well. In elementary school one of the big fat nurses did the paddling and she certainly enjoyed it, suspiciously so. One time I ran down the street and hid in the shrubbery and had a fun hour or so watching her search for me. My mother brought me back later in the day to get my paddling. Of course girls didn't get paddled.

Just the protestant version of catholic school. I don't know what they did with unwed expectant mothers. Probably had camps for them out in the sticks.

PNBrown we had a sadistic sumofabeatch in high school that got off on paddling the boys, one day he "thought" he would enjoy paddling me. NOT ! I told him what I thought of him, walked out of class and presented myself to the principal's office and told him to call my daddy. Hey if I was gonna get smacked around (which happened a lot growing up) it was gonna be by a man I was related to.

Unwed pregnant girls "disappeared", to homes for unwed mothers and/or out of state relatives. They never returned to school. They were forced to give up their babies for adoption unless a relative could pass it off as hers.

We had a nun visually & physically examine 6 or 7 students in the 2nd grade after someone wet the floor. I reported it to my parent's & they thought nothing of it as the nuns could do no wrong. So what if she pulled each student aside & looked at their underwear or touched their uniform trousers.
The nun claimed it was the same as checking a diaper when 1 mother showed up outraged. I seem to remember something to the effect of if the child couldn't tell the truth then something like this was the only recourse.As kids we all knew who it was when her mother took her out of school.

Doesn't happen here. Did when I was in middle school, but even before I graduated high school it was outlawed. I can remember Mr. W, God bless him, would paddle the boys, but not the girls. But he was one of those old school gentleman trying to teach the boys some manners. He wasn't the only one. That was back when people who were parentis in loco were allowed to give you that parental look like, "Don't you dare do that again!", and it worked. If not, they knew how to find your parents and did. I don't think any teacher ever paddled for tardiness or throwing papers though. Was more egregious than that. Can't remember, so I must be getting old!

You know, when I went to grammar schools in the 50's, I don't ever remember someone being paddled or physically accosted. I did have a teacher throw an eraser at me once but she missed. She was also one of my favorite teachers.

As an attendee of Catholic schools, I clearly recall physical punishments handed out to those children that "misbehaved". Any nonconformity was not tolerated, and I remember the sting of the ruler across the knuckles, the slap of a ringed hand across the face, among other things. It was terrible. I never did conform.

And then, when our son was forced to kneel on dried peas at a Catholic school, that was the end of it. We do not tolerate others physically disciplining our children.

Am I surprised it still goes on in some schools? No, not at all.

Should it? Absolutely not! That sort of punishment should be reserved for parental discipline, and whether or not they decide spanking is appropriate for whatever situation. But a school should never physically touch children in anger, or as punishment. There are other alternatives, like calling the parents.

And let's be very clear... spanking is not equated to beating. I would never beat a child or condone such a thing. But there are specific ages and specific situations that may call for something other than some of the useless methods of child rearing I've seen... what I'm saying is... each child, situation, and parental method might need to be different, without hurting the child.

I was spanked as a child, and while it didn't hurt me, it surely made me think about my behavior, or stopped me from hurting myself be doing something stupid.